This isn’t a question from a specific reader, but one I get from college students from time to time when I’m out at the bars.\u00a0 People read that my current job title is Webmaster, and that I’ve done both ASP.NET and PHP programming.\u00a0 In college I majored in Computer Science\/Math for my BA at Rhodes, and Mathematical Sciences with all 34 hours in Computer Science for my MS at the University of Memphis.\u00a0 So, people ask me, “Is computer science\/information technology still a good major?”<\/p>\n
My answer is a qualified yes.\u00a0 However, I’m going to break the answer into a multi-part post, and since I’m a poker player you have to suffer through one of my poker analogies to get to the answer.<\/p>\n
Okay, here’s the analogy:\u00a0 In Texas Hold’em, you get dealt two cards of your own, and you work with those and the five community cards on the board to make a hand.\u00a0 If one of your cards is an Ace, and an Ace shows up on the board, you have a pair of Aces.\u00a0 Not a bad start, which is how I view majoring in computer science or information technology in 2010.\u00a0 Not a bad start.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing, though.\u00a0 If your other starting card is a King, giving you AK, you have a premium starting hand.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because if somebody else also has a pair of Aces, your King kicker will give you the better hand.\u00a0 A starting hand like A7, on the other hand, is not terrible but it’s not premium, because that 7 is not a great kicker.\u00a0 It will lose to anyone holding A-8, A-9, A-10, A-J, A-Q, or A-K.<\/p>\n
So, here’s my point:\u00a0 Computer science\/IT is not a bad place to start if you want to major in it, but you better have a good kicker to go with it.<\/p>\n
What’s my idea of a good kicker?\u00a0 Well, I’ll give you a day or two to ponder it, and then post my thoughts in Part 2.\u00a0 I’ll give you a hint though:\u00a0 Not<\/em> the usual side areas of interest to most computer science students.\u00a0 For example, I have a background in math, but in 2010 I would not consider math a premium kicker.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This isn’t a question from a specific reader, but one I get from college students from time to time when I’m out at the bars.\u00a0 People read that my current job title is Webmaster, and that I’ve done both ASP.NET and PHP programming.\u00a0 In college I majored in Computer Science\/Math for my BA at Rhodes, … Continue reading “Reader question: “Should I major in IT\/computer science?” Part 1″<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5745,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions\/5745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}